Antarctica
Breaking the Ice
A
t the chapped lip of nowhere, beyond a purgatory of mercurial
seas, lies a huge white continent, pure as a new soul, shrouded in
perpetual winter. Antarctica is vast and splendid, luminous
and glowing, the way a flower, still on the stem, is its own light source. Astronauts
have called it a great white lantern at the bottom of the world.
By
Rita Ariyoshi
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Anyone
who imagines the place as an Alaska sunk at the bottom of the
globe is in for a big surprise. The mountains, rather than resembling
the Rockies, are volcanic, some still active, so that Antarctica
looks more like a crystal Tahiti carved in ice and expanded to
cover one-tenth of the earth's surface. It has the dubious honor
of claiming 90 percent of the earth's ice, which imprisons 70
percent of the planet's fresh surface water. If Antarctica were
to melt, global sea levels would rise 200 feet. The fossil record
would advise caution in the purchase of beachfront property anywhere,
for a temperate Antarctica once bore forests of ferns and 60-foot
trees. In the Jurassic period, about 190 million years ago, it
is thought to have been the core of a hypothetical supercontinent
called Gondwanaland that may have included Africa, Australia,
India, Madagascar, and South America.
Now
Antarctica is alone, glacial, unpeopled, bereft of trees, necklaced
in ice, dark six months of the year. It is the windiest, driest,
coldest place on earth. How cold? The record is -128.6°F at
the Russian scientific station of Vostok, on July 21, 1983. Antarctica
is also home to the oldest rock yet found: 3.93 billion years
old.
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We
were reminded that we were part of a privileged corps and
that we were on an expidition, not a cruise.
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I
wrote in my journal: Thursday. We flew out of Miami on a night
when the full moon turned red. Light refraction after a lunar
eclipse created the phenomenon. All through that long night we
droned toward Buenos Aires and on to Ushuaia, the snug harbor
at the end of the world, on Tierra del Fuego. It was January,
austral summer, yet the town shivered beneath Andean glaciers.
Unlike other continents, which tend to dribble away into water,
leaking and weeping in wet swamps and deltas, South America goes
out in glory, in the baying toothy peaks of the Andes. Beyond
this hunkered-down town lies the infamous Drake Passage, where
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet.
Our
ship was the Marco Polo, built in Germany to ply the ice-strewn
waters of the Soviet Union, then refitted by Orient Lines as a
four-star cruise liner. Over the next week, we would come to have
great affection for its sturdy, proletarian qualities and its
ability to negotiate treacherous waters and adverse weather with
ease—all the while serving notable meals with never a drop
of vichyssoise spilled, and staging cabaret shows with dancers
strutting in sequins and feathers.
We
headed out through the Beagle Channel into Drake Passage. Shipboard
lectures by naturalists, explorers, and scientists who had wintered
in Antarctica prepared us for our landings. We watched documentaries
of early expeditions: the ships crushed by ice; the howling winds;
the manic antics of men driven mad by cold, deprivation, and 24-hour
darkness; the frozen remains of those who failed. We were reminded
that we were part of a privileged corps and that we were on an
expedition, not a cruise. Retired teachers, vacationing bankers,
proverbial little old ladies in tennis shoes—all of us—suddenly
walked taller, laughed more heartily. We were striding in the
footsteps of heroes, brave and forsaken in the bitter cold, but
with a good wine list and a nightly turndown.
Antarctica
existed in the imagination long before any human eye beheld it.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) postulated that the world was round and
that a landmass must exist at the southern extremity to balance
the known lands of the north. Polynesian oral history relates
that a great explorer, Hui-te-Rangiora, sailing far south of New
Zealand in about A.D. 650, discovered a beautiful white land.
British explorer James Cook was the first in recorded history
to sail south of the Antarctic Circle, on January 17, 1773. As
he pressed farther south, his small ship Resolution became
a toy of the tempests. Cook reported "the rigging and sails all
decorated with icicles." Turned back by pack ice, he never saw
Antarctica. Peevishly, he wrote in his journal about the still-theoretical
continent, "If anyone should have resolution and perseverance
enough to elucidate this point, by proceeding farther south than
I have done, I shall not envy him the honour of discovery, but
I will be bold to say that the world will derive no benefit from
it."
Despite
Cook's assessment, a few individuals managed to derive considerable
benefit from it. Unnamed sealers, venturing southward in 1820,
found "soft gold," fur seals. In a few short years of intensive
hunting, the sealers nearly reduced to extinction a species that
had survived for eons in the most hostile of environments.
Whales
suffered a similar decimation. In 1904, a Norwegian company established
the first Antarctic whaling station at Grytviken on South Georgia
Island. They slayed 183 whales, triggering a massive hunt. Between
1925 and 1927, some 7,825 whales, including blues, fins, sperms,
and humpbacks, were taken.
Assessing
history and the potential for use and abuse, 12 nations with interests
in Antarctica forged a unique agreement in 1959. The Antarctic
Treaty suspends all sovereignty claims and ensures that the continent
will be used "for peaceful purposes only." To date, 43 nations
have signed on. All wildlife is protected, and the lusty roar
of bull elephant seals with harems of 40 to 50 females again echoes
across the icy half nights.
Saturday.
Sunlight on the Antarctic Sea was hard and bright and
slick, like gunmetal, not the color of liquid. The towering waves
were turquoise and foaming white, beautiful to behold in their
fury. Two humpback whales leaped across the bow of the ship. I
peered through the mist for a first sight of the white continent.
Not yet.
Deception
Island was scheduled to be our first stop, but the sea was too
rough, so we pushed on to Half Moon Island, home to a sizable
colony of chinstrap penguins. All landings were made by motorized
rubber boats called Zodiacs, each of which holds about 16 passengers.
Sunday.
In our rubber boats, we zipped about the bay among small icebergs,
like gnats in a strange cocktail. Some icebergs were an ethereal
blue. Ice rose all around us. It was snowing. The penguins, so
formal in their attire, smelled rather badly and sounded like
shrill dogs. The wildness and desolation were overwhelming, like
a sense of great regret.
When
we came back on board, attendants helped us with our boots and
handed us mugs of hot chocolate or hot toddy. I gathered myself
into a big woolen blanket and sat in a deck chair as the anchor
was hauled up and we cruised along the frozen shore. On the sound
system, mournful Irish uilleann pipes played, floating out into
the lovely, lonely space through which we were passing. A man
from Dublin came and sat beside me, proclaiming it all "very grand,
indeed." He said he booked this trip because Jacques Cousteau,
when asked about his favorite place in the world, replied without
hesitation, "Antarctica."
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Antarctica
is for people who like extremes, for continent counters
and baggers of trophy destinations.
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Monday
morning the sun actually made an appearance. The captain went
up in the ship's helicopter to assess the icebergs in the 7-mile
Lemaire Channel, reputedly the most scenic part of Antarctica.
He decided it was a go, and we went through the channel. The captain
then turned the ship around and sailed back, to make up for the
last two cruises when the passage had been too hazardous to navigate.
The
passage was narrow and twisted. Its icy walls closed in around
us so that it was like being in a crystal chalice. Large icebergs
floated by in the currents. Seals snoozed on them, drifting and
dreaming to the whoosh of the sea. Penguins laboriously climbed
up a great glacier then tobogganed down on their stomachs, plopping
in the water, then jumping out to begin again. The white volcanic
mountain peaks appeared haunted—Bali Hai in deep freeze.
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Passengers
on board the
Marco Polo take in the view
of the Lemaire Channel.
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We
were due to go ashore Monday afternoon at Port Lockroy, a former
whaling site and now a British research station. The British,
suffered by the 3,000 pairs of resident gentoo penguins, still
maintain a small presence there. A few Zodiacs made it ashore,
but before our landing party could be called, the weather turned
decidedly nasty and everyone was hurriedly trundled back aboard
while the captain sought shelter for the night. The waves were
monstrous and the wind so strong it blew the hail sideways. We
were consoled with afternoon tea and scones and a lecture on scurvy,
the bane of the early explorers. That evening, I dined on consommé,
grilled tuna steak with a light lemon sauce, and chocolate mousse
with black currant coulis. My husband, Jim, had scallop
tempura with ginger sauce, suckling pig, and cherries jubilee.
Afterward we sipped brandy and watched the revue. Nicky Derrick,
a fifth-generation marimba player, and her husband, Adam, sang
"Baby, It's Cold Outside."
Back
in our cabin, we sat cozily watching the storm. Snow piled up
against the windows, shrouding the lifeboats. The wind was so
intense it moved over the surface of the water like furious swarms
of small fish. But we were warm and well fed, and we had music.
By morning the tempest had passed and the captain returned to
Port Lockroy, so those who hadn't gotten ashore could have a turn.
In
wan sunlight the place was eerie. Huge icebergs in fantastic shapes
loomed around us. One was shaped like Noah's ark with two seals
curled on its deck. Others looked like Diamond Head, a fallen
airplane, a cold, cold Sphinx. It was as if some great calamity
had befallen the world, and in the night the frozen remnants had
drifted silently southward.
As
soon as our Zodiac was launched, a huge seal, probably a good
thousand pounds, popped up right behind it, close enough to pet.
It looked at us with big, sensitive eyes for a long time, then
dove beneath the rubber boat and came up beside us. I was sure
my Irish grandmother had sent a selkie (in Irish legend,
a seal who can become human) to accompany me in this faraway place.
Our nature guide said it was a leopard seal and it may have been
perusing the menu. To them, people are enormous penguins, and
they can kill and eat about six penguins an hour. At the same
time, thousands of penguins waddled about like bemused prom dates
on shore.
Another
landing was scheduled, this one on the continent itself. Up to
this point, we'd been messing around in the Antarctic islands.
Katabatic winds, the notorious gales that swirl out of the South
Pole, descended on Paradise Harbor, closing it. We sailed on to
the more protected Neko Harbor, and in the teeth of the wind,
the intrepid Zodiacs ferried ashore everyone who wanted to actually
set foot upon the great white continent.
Antarctica
casts a spell. It's like a magnet, a force field drawing you to
itself, where you find that beneath the white snow, the ice, compressed
by endless ages, is the purest blue. This is the allure.
Antarctica
is for people who like extremes, for continent counters and baggers
of trophy destinations. One man said, "I'm from Texas. When I
started traveling, I vowed I'd see the other seven continents."
His
friend laughed, "This is the perfect cruise for me—no museums,
no malls, no cathedrals."
On
our last day we were able to sail into the caldera of Deception
Island, where the obsidian volcanic ash is streaked with white
snow. Thermal activity heats parts of the bay to a simmer and
we were invited to shed our parkas and swim. An older woman and
a young girl hesitantly ventured in, and then the Japanese contingent
stripped down and ran in with the enthusiasm of penguins, splashing
and frolicking in the warm water while the air around them hovered
just below freezing.
The next morning, we awoke safely moored in Ushuaia. The deck
no longer rolled. We were back in the world of men and it was
a big disappointment. We had ventured far and tasted the wildest
wilderness, the place that drives people mad if it cannot drive
them away.
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